Musings in Universe 252
by An Endless Bookmarker
Summary: Sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes weird things happen. That's a rule in Universe 252. In which Naruto and Sasuke mourn the loss of their comrades and sanity. Heavy AU. One-shot.


"What do you call a window that you can't break?"

The question came out of the blue. There was no rhyme or reason, not that there ever is with him.

Sasuke turned her head slightly to the left, tilting it to balance the stick of dango in her mouth. Her raven locks always got in the way of her eyes, to which she found perpetually annoying and he always got a good laugh out of it.

"What?" Well it came out more of a "Welrmrph?" Because she accidentally dropped that same stick of dango on her blue and white jacket.

"Son of a bitch." She began to swore up and down and thinking about how her mother was going to kill her for ruining few of her 'only girly clothes'.

A slight chuckle from beside her managed to raise her ire a little higher. There he was laying a few feet away, nestled on the vivid green grass under the tallest tree they could find in Training ground 17; his messy blonde hair covered his eyes and a slight tug of a smile was on his face.

"Like, you know, you punch it, but nothing breaks?"

What was he? Trying to be wise?

"Are you trying to pretend to be smart?" She asked while huffing at him. She could clearly see the stain on her jacket. Her mother was definitely going to kill her—not only that but her back hurt from lying against this tree for so long.

"Hey, I'll have you know I'm a very smart guy when I want to be." She snorted—not that it was unladylike or anything, and not like she really cared.

"You're as smart as you hate ramen, dobe." She couldn't come up with anything better because somehow he managed to hog the only shady part on this part of the tree. She couldn't look outwards from the tree into the field without the sun spitting in her eyes. How they manage to always elude rainy days mystified her.

She could hear him sit up a bit, rustling the grass beside him while a calm eerie wind blew into the field, causing waves of grass to flicker a bit of the sunlight hitting them. The flowers would pick up here and there but nothing else moved. Training ground 17 on this day was again a great place for a nap.

"Shut up, teme." The usual banter between teammates was there—like it always is, but this time there was something more.

_An edge._ She mused. Something was eating at the idiot, or maybe it's just how he is. She shook her head, it's not like she knows how he clocks anyway—he was always doing the most confusing of things.

_Well what do you expect from Konoha's Most Unpredictable Ninja._

She was only lost in her musings for a little bit; she seemed to be doing that a lot too.

_Maybe his crazy is rubbing off on me. _She sweat-dropped a bit. That would be worrisome.

She glanced at his face as she flicked the empty dango stick far away.

"What's eating at you?" Curt, how she always is.

"Eh nothing." He brushed it off, how he always does.

The silent gazing face told her otherwise though. Naruto rarely gets like this. She can probably count the times she's personally seen him quietly stare out, as if there was so much more going on in this instance than she would ever know, on one of her hands. Naruto and thinking rarely go positively together.

She wonders how it turned like this. And what if it hadn't turned out like this.

What if Naruto was never born? Or what if Kakashi hadn't been gone for a month on "top secret Anbu hush-hush", as Naruto continually states.

What if she wasn't the way she was now. What if Itachi had killed the entire clan?

What if Sakura had never died? Her heart clenched a bit. So did her fists.

She quickly grasped the lines of grass on the ground and threw it into the wind. The blades of green quickly scattered amongst the wind.

"Naruto…" She held her voice. It wasn't that deep, and it sure as hell wasn't girly, but Naruto always made fun of the fact that her threats always fell on his ears because of how feminine her voice was.

"You know, sometimes I remember." He was still casting his gaze out into the field. It was much stranger now, she realized, then before when she barely knew him. Before Team 7.

Back when he was loud and annoying, well technically he was still loud and annoying, but now she knows his reasons.

"I remember those brief moments after Iruka-sensei picked me up." She perked up; the incident was something he rarely talked about.

"You know, after I dispelled too many of the Kage Bunshins at once." She knew. It was the least she could squeeze out of every shinobi she and Naruto knew together.

"I heard a brief snippet of the conversation; you know what I heard?" He turned to her and Sasuke knew she was looking at Naruto.

No one could make that wishful of a face; thin whiskers and sky eyes and all.

"I heard 'Hokage-sama, I don't know how he survived it, really. He seemed fine and all but, with that much instantaneous memory pouring into him, he should have been seriously mentally injured, or at the least show signs of mental scarring!'" Naruto impersonated random people very well. As well as she did even. Which wasn't much at all.

Her face was impassive; it always is. But her eyes flicked towards his. His face still stuck in that thoughtful dream.

"You know, I think to myself now, maybe now more than other times, maybe the reason nothing happened…" His voice was low and she could barely hear it.

"Was because there was nothing there to begin with." He finished lamely. He always acted well in front of his superiors. He always acted the sane fool.

Her gaze softened. This wasn't the Naruto she was used to. Then again she probably wasn't acting like the Sasuke he was used to either.

"Dobe…" She tried to start, her voice rising higher then she would like. Moments like these were lost on her.

"It's funny now that I think about it." He chuckled a bit, completely ignoring her. She tsked, _well that won't do_.

"It's a hole, moron. It wasn't that good of a riddle in the first place." She finished. She faintly and unconsciously rubbed the scar on her right shoulder, her brother's silver katana gleaming in the reflection of her eyes. She could feel his gaze.

"Yeah…" He looked at her with those eyes of his. His fists scrunched up in his lap, his fingers holding the edge of Sakura's hitate.

Those sad broken almost glass-like eyes.

There are some times she wonders about other times. Other worlds.

A place where she and Naruto weren't such good friends because of the tragic loss of their teammate.

A place where she wasn't missing a father.

A place where Naruto wasn't a horribly confused young man in search of himself and whether or not he was crazy.

She paused to think about herself.

A place where her mother wasn't dead would be good too.

She glanced over at Naruto who found his way closer, his head resting on the trunk of the tree behind her.

A place where sunny days weren't sad days, and rainy days came sooner.

* * *

A/N: I don't write much. But I like to read. I also, as you can probably tell, hate many grammar-y things. If there are run-ons and the like, they were probably on purpose because I write like I think. Rules were never really something I cared about. Otherwise, feel free to tell me how bad I write.

And yes, this is a one-shot. These are all one-shots. In a neat package.


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